Hollywood Playbook: Friday's Top 5 News Items

Hollywood’s Running Out of High Concepts?

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This is the kind of “high-concept” that every wannabe screenwriter has come up with and then was never able to execute or was wise enough to cast aside as too stupid. With Jim Carrey’s awful “Yes Man,” I was suspicious Hollywood had run out of high concept ideas. When “Cowboys and Aliens” hit screens, I was even more sure.

With “The Angriest Man In Brooklyn” the case might just be closed.

Some seemingly impossible concepts have been cracked. “Groundhog Day” and “Panic Room” immediately come to mind. But “An angry man who has alienated his friends and family is given 90-minutes to live and make amends” feels forced, frenzied, and tired in just the trailer.

For Robin William’s sake, let’s hope the movie is better than the trailer. Regardless, it’s an awful trailer.

The brothers Russo, Joe and Anthony, directors of the “Captain America” sequel in theatres today, told Mother Jones that their new movie is a political thriller taking aim at the Obama Administration’s “kill list” and “drone strikes,” among other things:

“[Marvel] said they wanted to make a political thriller,” Joe Russo, who directed the film with his brother Anthony, tells Mother Jones. “So we said if you want to make a political thriller, all the great political thrillers have very current issues in them that reflect the anxiety of the audience…That gives it an immediacy, it makes it relevant. So [Anthony] and I just looked at the issues that were causing anxiety for us, because we read a lot and are politically inclined. And a lot of that stuff had to do with civil liberties issues, drone strikes, the president’s kill list, preemptive technology”–all themes they worked into the film, working closely with screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.

That’s all well and good, but how about something that touches on the health care system and economic recovery Obama killed?

Obviously, it means a lot for Captain America and the hum-drum Marvel Universe franchise. What it could mean in a larger context, though, is that the summer movie-going season will now start a month earlier, at the beginning of April instead of May.